


Dark Like a Bruise

by scioscribe



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Extended Scene, Grief/Mourning, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-04 22:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16355057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: He smoothed back James’s hair.  If he’d had a comb, like Jopson, he would have wielded it in the bargain.  He wanted to satisfy James’s worn-out vanity.





	Dark Like a Bruise

**Author's Note:**

> In which I drag out Fitzjames's death scene for a sad Victorian striptease.

“Use this,” Bridgens had said. A small bottle, to Crozier’s eye, but enough perhaps to get the job done: God knew there was so little of James now. A drop might do, on those dry lips. “It will smooth out the sharpest edges of his pain, and then he will—Dr. Goodsir told me it would be just like falling asleep. It’ll be gentle with him, sir.”

So he had rubbed the drink down.

Bridgens had left them, of course—Crozier had told him to, all the while knowing he hadn’t needed to be told.

“So many places I never touched you,” Crozier said. “Never your throat, before now.”

“We have not had the leisure we deserved.” James’s voice was a rattle in his chest. All the strength that was left in him had fled into his hands, which held Crozier’s with maybe a tenth of their old power. “Haven’t even seen you. Not all of you. Just bits and pieces—the damned Arctic gives us all more modesty than a matron with her all her skirts.”

“Well, I’m not much of a feast for the eyes.” Under other, better circumstances, he doubted they would be as they were to each other, no: if they had found the Passage, he would still be a lush and James still a blade, sharp and shining, with no use for him.

“No, for days, Francis, for weeks, you have been all I have had appetite for.” A quiet chuff of a laugh. “And you blush to hear it.”

He did, but he did believe him. They were past any lies, and he had always put his trust where he had put his heart. He had believed Sophia, too, when she’d said he brought her joy: that had been his great consolation. To have loved them both well—it was all he hoped for now.

He smoothed back James’s hair. If he’d had a comb, like Jopson, he would have wielded it in the bargain. He wanted to satisfy James’s worn-out vanity. The Netsilik did right to tend to their dead so carefully—one last show of tenderness he'd allow himself, then, when this was done. He would dress James again, even if his only wardrobe were the same sweat-darkened linen shirt, the same coat with its fine white scales of salt and snow, the same boots he could no longer shine to a newness.

He had lost the hour they were in. He’d spent too long thinking months ahead.

“Let me see some part of you,” James said, when Crozier’s hand passed his face a final time, his sleeve brushing like a moth-wing against James’s forehead.

“How is your pain?”

“Damn my pain. If I’m to fall asleep, I want a dream of you to send me off. And I am falling.”

Crozier unbuttoned his shirt-cuff. Two weeks ago he had lost that button and Jopson had sewn it neatly back into place with thread unraveled from his own coat. The color of the stitch was different there, then, dark like a bruise. He rolled his sleeve up as far as he was able, just to the juncture of his arm, the crease of the inside of his elbow. It couldn’t be called much, but he had no other notion of what to offer.

“There.” James closed his eyes. “You bury the thought of that with me and I will hold fast to it.”

He’d bury his whole right arm if James asked him to.

“God wants you to live,” James said again.

Crozier wiped a tear off his cheek. Even dying, James told the same story more than once. “Yes, you said.”

“I am sure of it. I’m close now and I am sure of it.”

He would seem an ill choice for a mystic, but then Francis had never had the satisfaction of Sir John’s faith, to trust that all would be ordered as he himself would have put it. “I’ll take it as an order then.”

He held his post past the moment of James falling asleep and then long past the moment of him dying. Then he dressed him, buried him, and went on, went on to fresher griefs. His right arm stayed a little colder than his left: he had put his coat on again without lowering his sleeve. But they were long gone from that place by the time he realized it.


End file.
